Culture of Dominance in Decline: A Warning

As the sun itself sets, so does empires and imperialism, a fact its champions, Great Britain and the United States, should just recognize sooner.

In the specific case of Great Britain, market, entertainment, defense, and other British icons now belong to foreigners: Burberry, although still at the top of its league, its patrons are often tourists; Cadbury is now owned by America’s Kraft; luxury car brand Jaguar was bought by Ford in the 1990s and now is owned by India’s Tata Group; even top football teams (Manchester League) are now owned by Americans. In the 1990s, bands like the Spice Girls and Oasis ruled the charts. British Petroleum (BP) even re-branded itself to remove “British” and is today known as Beyond Petroleum, although after the Gulf oil spill in 2010, no one wants to be attached to the brand.

As in the law of diminishing rates of returns where profits will always decline and the search for new markets becomes more important as the decline happens, an imperialist government needs to find and nurture sympathetic, if not always legitimate governments to get market share. We need not look any further than the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In addition to securing the supply of fossil energy to the West, the Iraq war was also instigated to guarantee Western market dominance.

As there are no more other new markets to dominate, it is unfortunate that we are witnessing the privatization of war. Schools, health care, prisons have been privatized by international capital, and today, violence and war. As nation states become market states, violence and war also become privatized.

Unless imperialist Britain become more modest in its treatment of the world and abandon the Pax Britannica dream, it will have a difficult position in living with, if not confronting, the growing powers of the East which now are collectively known as BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China).

Duane ARD, March 2011